


Onymous

by Anonymous



Category: Lord of the Rings RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-06-06
Updated: 2009-06-06
Packaged: 2017-10-02 10:05:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 721
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5142
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Onymous: bearing a name.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Onymous

**Author's Note:**

> [Melle](http://melle.livejournal.com)'s birthday present, which she richly deserves. [Sushi](http://vegetariansushi.livejournal.com) did stellar betawork on this one.

People do not fall in love. Orlando knows this. People have dates, girlfriends, boyfriends, affairs, relationships, breakups, but they do not _do_ anything. They have things. They don't fall.

This isn't falling in love. This is just something he doesn't have the words for.

Once he has the words, he'll know what he has on his hands, and with that in mind, he skives off the Friday night pub crawl with Dom and Elijah to sit home with the dictionary.

A and G done of the _Condensed Oxford English Dictionary_, three hours, and four cups of tea later, he gives up. Maybe he's just looking in the wrong dictionary; maybe a dictionary of the wrong language; maybe he's just _stupid_ and _dyslexic_ and—_fuck_.

* * *

It's the first premiere, and he has no idea of what's going on. Liv hugs him from behind and kisses his cheek, and he clutches her arm so hard he must be bruising her. She doesn't seem to mind, just lets him listen to her breathing. "You'll be okay," she says.

"'Course I will, Livvie-loo," he laughs. "I'm fucking invincible."

"You sure about that, Superman?" she says.

"Yeah," he says. "I have everything I need."

"You in love, pretty boy?" she mocks, and giggles, and she's so fucking beautiful in the Wellington sunlight he almost says, "Yes, with you," but bites his tongue and doesn't answer, doesn't ruin the moment.

* * *

LA is like another world. The sky should be spun-sugar pink, visibly bizarre; the air is blue at the edges and shimmery, like lip gloss. The people are all gorgeous or hideous; he can't take his eyes off them. Lij told him, "Your first two weeks? _Don't buy coffee_. I'm fuckin' serious, man, LA plus caffeine....it's not even fucked-up. We'll have to bail you out of jail for, I don't know, beer and porn and chocolate and pimp hat and bad shirts and something I can't even think of."

Orlando raised his eyebrows, and let Elijah babble on.

But now, he calls Viggo, and says, sheepishly, "LA is _weird_," and Viggo laughs.

"The end," he agrees.

* * *

Orlando loves what he does. He loves that he has paychecks for playing pretend, he loves that he has a passport full of stamps, he loves that he has the ability to not be himself for a while.

He doesn't love that sometimes, now, he can't tell the difference between the mockup and his real life. He's not too keen on the fact that he has to leave important conversations unfinished for weeks, months, while he goes away on big shiny airplanes. He's pretty sure it's unhealthy to want not to be himself on a regular basis.

He doesn't care. He fucking loves what he does, and if that means he doesn't have a lot of what other people have, he's okay with that.

He is.

* * *

He has a week. He hasn't checked the voicemail on his mobile for three days, and he deliberately kicks it under the bed before he checks out. He has a week.

He spends six hours in a plane.

He goes through customs in forty-eight minutes.

He has to wait for a car for three minutes.

The drive takes almost fifty-two minutes, before his patience with LA traffic snaps and he makes the driver drop him off.

The last ten blocks, walking, would be only ten minutes, but he's carrying a duffel bag, and that slows him down. It's maybe seventeen minutes later that he gets there.

He had a week. Now he has six days and odd hours. He's six years late.

* * *

"Dunno what to call this," he mumbles around a mouthful of cornflakes and out-of-season strawberries. Viggo shrugs. "It's weird," he continues, swallowing. "I never thought of it. I couldn't put a name to it, so I couldn't think of it as a, as a thing."

"It doesn't have to be a thing," Viggo points out. "We can just do what we want to do, when we want to do it."

"I know. I just—" he chews ferociously on his cornflakes. "I don't have anything to, like, go on, you know?"

"No."

"Okay."

People do not fall in love. He was right. They didn't fall into anything. Stumbled, maybe, tripped headlong, and maybe they hit the ground hard, but they didn't fall anywhere.


End file.
